Nurun Launches Redesigned Transactional Platform With Walmart Canada

Nurun is proud to announce the launch of Walmart Canada’s new website, Walmart.ca. Working closely with Walmart Canada’s e-Commerce and Walmart’s Global eCommerce team, Nurun was responsible for the redesign and development of the company’s website. The new Walmart.ca provides improved user experiences across all devices—including smartphones and tablets—and establishes a cross-channel foundation that will facilitate future site growth and increased brand visibility for the retailer.

The new Walmart.ca is the first responsively designed e-commerce website created for a large Canadian retailer, allowing for consistent and seamless experiences and functionality on all connected devices. In addition, the website’s new architectural model is modular in nature and built for speed and performance, and the robust transactional platform allows for future introduction of new products and services.

“Since partnering with Nurun in 2012, we’ve worked together to create a foundation for next-generation multichannel commerce,” said Simon Rodrigue, Vice President of E-Commerce and General Manager of Walmart.ca. “The new Walmart.ca integrates online and offline best practices, providing consumers with a fast and easy shopping experience across any device.”

Consumers’ decision journeys—from consideration to purchase—are increasingly non-linear and take place across multiple touchpoints, both online and offline. Nurun’s research revealed that “couch commerce” continues to be a growing trend in the Canadian retail market; design research and usability testing showed that a significant portion of existing Walmart.ca customers preferred to shop via tablet compared to any other connected device. The new Walmart.ca is the first e-commerce site in Canada specifically designed with the tablet in mind, reaching consumers wherever and whenever they choose to shop.

“The creation of Walmart.ca was driven by consumer insights,” said Emily Bond, EVP and General Manager, Nurun in Toronto. “Our agile, team-based approach allowed us to work with Walmart to co-create a robust, omnichannel retail experience for post-PC consumers. This was a truly collaborative effort between Nurun and Walmart.”

Nurun was responsible for the consumer research and usability testing, solution architecture, interaction and visual design, and development of the web user interface.

The composition of the technology stack was based on building on the foundation of Oracle Commerce, including ATG Web Commerce, Oracle Endeca with Experience Manager, Alfresco CMS, and the use of a modern web platform from Typesafe, which includes the Play Framework, Akka and Scala.

“The introduction of Typesafe’s Reactive platform not only allowed us to build a platform that was going to scale, it fulfilled the need for today’s web applications to be highly responsive and seamlessly integrate with disparate systems and APIs,” said Bob Seehra, VP of Technology at Nurun in Toronto.

“The expressiveness of Scala and the nimble power of the Play framework was a breath of fresh air for the development team at Nurun. We used Akka and Redis to create a fast and resilient integration layer. The versatility of the Alfresco CMS made it possible to supplement the experience manager to create a site that is almost entirely skinnable by the business,” said Ankur Mathur, Architect at Nurun in Toronto.

“Thanks to new technology, consumers today are following their own unique paths to purchase, and the new Walmart.ca was created with the empowered shopper in mind,” said Nurun’s Bond. “From online to in-store, the retail experience has transformed in myriad ways, and the new Walmart.ca ensures that Walmart shoppers are in control.”

Duncan Bruce, President and Chief Executive Officer of Publicis Canada, is excited to announce Steve Tremblay to the newly formed role of President of Nurun Canada, and Christian Ayotte as Executive Vice-President, Client Services.